Launch of Dominion special issue on the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver/Whistler with editor Dawn Paley and Billie Pierre from the Nlaka'Pamux Nation speaking on the 2010 Winter Olympics in the evening.

Wednesday, Jan. 13
No Olympics, No tar sands on Native Land: Resist the Torch! Speakers and opposition to the torch as it comes through Edmonton as part of the corporate festival of militarism and greed.
5:30pm
Alberta Legislature (107th street & 97th avenue, downtown Edm.)

Come for a tar sands focused conference that discusses the true meaning of 'corporate responsibility" as it relates to development. Many large players will be explored with discussions of Suncor, Enbridge, BP, Royal Bank as well 2010 Winter Games Sponsorship and the impacts on near and far communities with representatives speaking from affected communities. Space for planning a response collectively will be provided.

Everyone's Downstream III is to be held in Edmonton once again, this time occurring in January, 2010.

In the shadow of many successful and ascendant campaigns against the world's largest industrial project-- the gigaproject-- this year Everyone's Downstream will highlight several of the corporate campaign targets and the communities most directly affected.

With developments (the Alberta tar sands and the 2010 Winter Olympic Games) that cause displacement, land dispossession, massive climate footprint and dislocation of entire communities, resistance always emerges. Add in militarism-- both in cause as well as result-- and the human toll is vast and the resistance extremely fertile.

All of these issues will be highlighted for discussion and planned resistance in a horizontal network at the community level. We host this in Alberta but we plan for the world.

Corporations like Suncor Energy mine here and refine tar sands across the continent and sponsor the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.

BP (formerly British Petroleum) extracts in Alberta, refines in the United States and produces products for North America-- yet headquarter their operations in Europe.

Royal Bank of Canada invests more than any other financial institution in tar sands operations and is the third largest sponsor of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, yet is based in Toronto.

Enbridge wishes to link up the entire continent with pipelines of poison across waterways of life in the East, West, North and South.

A map of all of these developments is also a map of our natural allies.

For these reasons and many more,

Everyone's Downstream III: From the front lines to the finish lines-- races to the bottom.

is set to take place from January 15, 2010 to January 17, 2010 in Edmonton, Alberta. Supported and associated events begin on Tuesday, January 12, 2010.

The Dominion Special issue on 2010 Winter Olympic Games

Everyone's Downstream along with Ap!rg in collaboration with *The Dominion* will be hosting a launch event in Edmonton to celebrate the publication of the special issue on The Olympics. Join us in an informal setting where we will have snacks and be chatting about strengthening grassroots media and distributing the new special issue!

Dawn Paley, co-editor of the Dominion and Billie Pierre from the Nlaka'Pamux nation to present. Bios below.

"*In Canada, you will find a nation that works every day towards creating the conditions of the Olympic ideal.*" --Jean Chrétien

*The "Olympic Ideal" is part of one of the world’s most successful marketing campaigns, built around concepts that almost everyone can agree upon: world-class amateur sport and peaceful competition.*

But a rising chorus of critical voices say that the Olympics are deeply implicated in the expropriation of land, money and resources. From movements demanding "No Olympics on Stolen Native Land" to angry business owners, resistance to the Olympics economic and social agenda is growing.The Olympics budget includes a billion dollars for security. A billion dollars each will be spent on a new convention centre, a larger highway to Whistler, and SNC Lavalin's rail link from the Vancouver airport to downtown.In the political and economic manoeuvres leading up to the 2010 Olympics, a different "ideal" has been revealed – one of exclusive contracts, sponsorship deals, displacement, social cleansing, and corruption. At times, sport seems like an afterthought.

Many of the real stories behind the Olympics remain to be told.*
*

Billie Pierre is from the Nlaka'Pamux Nation and will speak about the impacts of the 2010 on her and others traditional lands, and how the Superhighway being built from the Tar Sands to the Vancouver Port is impacting local indigenous communities.

She is a co-founder of Redwire Magazine, has strong ties with the Native Youth Movement, and has actively organized with the International Indigenous Youth Network.

Dawn Paley is a journalist based in Vancouver, BC. Fluent in English, French and Spanish, she writes for magazines and newspapers across Canada. Her work has appeared in the *Vancouver Sun*, *The Globe and Mail*, *BC Business Magazine*, the *Georgia Straight*, the *Tyee* and *This Magazine*.

Dawn works as a contributing editor with *The Dominion*, and is currently pursuing her Masters in Journalism at the University of British Columbia.

She will be speaking on the issues related to the olympics, media coverage and sponsorship, and the importance of national resistance to the games.

*The Special Issue:*

Thousands of copies of the Olympic special issue will be printed and distributed through grassroots networks across Turtle Island in November 2009. As you might be aware, previous special issues of *The Dominion* have received critical acclaim for their coverage of Canadian foreign policy, the Athabasca tar sands, and the Canadian mining sector.

"Offsetting Resistance: The effects of foundation funding and corporate fronts from the Great Bear Rainforest to the Athabasca River" is a special report and magazine written by Macdonald Stainsby and Dru Oja Jay.

With movements around climate change in general and tar sands in particular reaching larger and more sympathetic audiences than ever before, what kind of accountable, democratic structures are formed in response is more and more a critical question.

Yet as more people become concerned with these issues and look to participate in that movement, avenues for funding, accountability, participation and basic grassroots democracy are being smothered by a secretive, hierarchical coalition of professional insiders.

This is not a new occurrence in the environmental world. Among many places, it has taken place in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories and had anti-democratic results.

Qwatsinas (Ed Moody), herditary chief from the Nuxalk Nation (located within the recently dubbed Great Bear Rainforest) will discuss what transpired in negotiations with environmental organizations, the government and logging corporations. The Great Bear Rainforest deal was cut and signed behind closed doors and without larger democratic oversight.

The implications of such on self determination for his and other First Nations communities dealing with tar sands, pipelines and refineries makes this discussion critical.

Maude Prud'homme has been organising on environnmental issues for more than 12 years. She has been working specifically on the case of the René Levasseur Island in Nitassinan, Innu territory, for the last 7 years as well as forging ecofeminism tools and networking. She is currently working as coordinator of the Réseau québécois des groupes écologistes, a network formed by grassroots groups in 1982 to provide collective tools of support and representation on common issues.

She will address the impacts, so far, of financing by big foundations in
Quebec, and in what context it occurs. What have been the reactions of the different groups, and what are the differing perspectives as the whole forestry regime is being revamped. There will be a historical background introduction and some hypothesis as to which interests are at sake in regards to big energy interests and Quebec's forests.

Petr Cizek is a land use planner and independent environmental consultant who has worked with numerous First Nations in the Northwest Territories and across northern Canada for the past twenty years. He will discuss the role of foundation and industry grants to First Nations and environmental groups and the threat to democracy of such funding, including personal reference to his experience in the Northwest Territories working with first nations in relation to the Mackenzie Gas Project. In a series of articles starting in 2005, he was the first to expose the connections between the Canadian Boreal Initiative, the Pew Charitable Trusts, Sunoco, and the tar sands.